You are here

Smoking Linked to Breast Cancer in Young Women

Smoking may increase the risk of dying early in pre-menopausal women with breast cancer, a research said. “Overall, this work is monumental in advising patients about how smoking might affect breast cancer outcome,” said co-author Yuko Minami from Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan. The study included 848 patients admitted to a single hospital in Japan from 1997 to 2007. The patients were followed until December 31, 2010, reports IANS. Researchers found that pre-menopausal women who smoked for more than 21.5 years had a 3.1-time higher risk of dying from any cause and a 3.4-times higher risk of dying from breast cancer.The increased risks seen in pre-menopausal women were especially relevant to women whose cancers expressed both the estrogen receptor and the progesterone receptor, the study said. The results appeared in the journal Cancer Science.